‘More or less.’
‘And then you have to lose them afterwards — before they find out you’ve been lying to them?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the knife …’
‘Nimble’s knife, yes. I have to find out why Kindly sent it to me.
He stood up. ‘Well, you’ve excelled yourself this time! How are you going to do all this?’
‘I don’t know, but I’ve got to manage it somehow. You can see how important this is. If the Otomies get to Nimble first, either they’ll kill him or they’ll make him wish he was dead already. You understand — you’ve got sons yourself.’
‘Yes, and I’d like to live long enough to see them again!’Handy looked sick. ‘On the other hand, I suppose we’re stuck with these lunatics, at least until they think they’ve found what they’re after. All right, show off your hunting skills! Just remember who’s going to get the blame when it all goes wrong!’
I was spared having to decide whether to thank him for that or not by the sight and sound of the steward as he burst out of the rushes, panting like a man running from a pack of coyotes. A moment later his pursuers appeared: two breechcloth-clad Otomies, whooping like excited children as they closed on their prey. They would probably have thrown themselves on him if the grotesque features of their captain had not appeared behind them, his voice barking at them to come to order.
He strode towards us, his green-clad arms and legs swinging carelessly, keeping up with his men with no apparent effort. He still carried no shield, but I noticed that he was armed now. From his right hand dangled the most evil-looking sword I had ever seen. Instead of a flat shaft edged with obsidian, this was a long round club whose blades stuck out four ways. I felt sick when I saw it. You could not cut cleanly through anything with a weapon like that: it had been made to crush bones and shred flesh, to maim, not to kill.
As Fox and the other warriors stumbled into view behind him, he turned his eye on me.
‘Well?’ he rasped.
‘A footprint.’
‘I can see that.’
I knelt in the mud with the captain standing over me. I could feel his breath on my neck.
‘Barefoot,’ I said.
‘I can see that too. What does it prove?’
‘The two we’re after weren’t wearing sandals.’
‘Most people don’t wear sandals. Not everyone who does would keep them on in this mire, either, if they didn’t want to spoil them.’ His own, along with the legs of his suit, were splattered with mud, and the ends of their long floppy straps were black from where they had been trailing in it. I assumed he did not mind as he could afford to throw them away. Successful warriors like him were richly rewarded.
‘When are you going to tell me something I can’t see for myself?’ he growled.
That was when I saw where I had been going wrong, and how I might come out of this alive, after all.
The captain wanted me to tell him about something he could not see. What did it matter if I could not see it either? I had only to lie convincingly and I had been doing that all my life.
I tried to remember how the more patient and long-suffering of our instructors at the House of Tears might have behaved when confronted with a particularly doltish novice wilfully refusing to grasp the obvious — me, perhaps, craning my neck and squinting at the night sky and for the twentieth time getting the Celestial Marketplace mixed up with the Ball — Court of the Stars. Imitating him, I uttered a long, weary sigh. ‘Very well. Let’s look at this print again, shall we? Does anything strike you as odd?’
‘No.’
‘Lift your foot up.’
The captain gave me a suspicious look but did as he was told. His leather-shod sole hung uncertainly in the air for a moment, making him look as if he had been frozen in the act of kicking me in the face.
‘Now, look at your own footprint. You’re not exactly little, are you? How come your footprint’s so much shallower than this one?’
He put his foot down again. ‘Is it?’ He bent forward. ‘Hmm. I suppose so’, he added reluctantly. ‘What of it?’
I had to bite my lip to stop myself breathing a loud sigh of relief. The difference in depth between the two prints, if there was any, was imperceptible, but if he convinced himself he could see it and accepted my explanation, I knew I might live through the rest of the morning, at least.
‘Well, obviously there was more weight on this foot.’
‘You mean whoever made this print was bigger than I am? Interesting.’ He stood upright again, rubbing his chin speculatively. ‘This could be more fun than I thought it was going to be!’
I twisted my neck to look up at the towering, brawny figure. ‘That’s unlikely,’ I pointed out. ‘What I think is, this was made by two men. One of them was carrying the other!’
With the Sun peering at me over his shoulder it was hard to make out the man’s expression. I found myself holding my breath while he thought about what I had said.
The thoughtful silence went on and on. The muscles in my chest were taut and straining. I started to feel slightly dizzy. The longer I knelt in front of the captain, looking up at him, the more he seemed like a statue, a great, crudely carved block of granite about to topple over on to my head.
‘Fox!’
I let my breath out in an explosive gasp as the line of men behind the captain stirred. Fox came forward.
‘See these prints? See the difference between them?’ The captain lifted his foot again.
The breechcloth-clad warrior looked uncertainly from one indentation to the other. ‘I see them,’ he said at last.
‘You’re an idiot!’ his captain roared suddenly. ‘Can’t you see how much deeper that one is? Obviously made by a man carrying someone else on his back. How many times did you goover this ground yesterday? A child could have spotted this. Even this slave saw it, almost the moment I did!’
Fox stepped back hastily, his eyes wide with terror. ‘Sir, I’m … I’m sorry, sir. I should have seen it … I just couldn’t see … I mean, why …’
‘You’re as blind as you are stupid, that’s why!’
The man swallowed nervously; but when he glanced at me, I saw that much of his terror was feigned. His eyes were clear and unblinking, and even though he quailed visibly before his captain’s sudden rages, I could see from the way he curled the corner of his mouth and his swift, shrewd appraisal as he looked me up and down that he was not the one in real danger here.
‘I couldn’t … Sir, I just couldn’t see why one of them would have been carrying the other.’
‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’ the captain shouted. He prodded me hard with his upraised foot. ‘You tell him, slave!’
I stood up carefully. ‘Could be any number of reasons. Perhaps one of them was lame. Twisted his ankle getting out of the boat, maybe.’
‘You see?’ The captain sneered.
Fox lowered his head.
‘Now take us up on to dry land, before we all get foot rot! I want to see this slave pick up the trail where you lost it!’
I stood aside as the line of warriors shouldered their way through the rushes. My master’s steward and Handy brought up the rear of the column. The steward passed me without a glance, casually swinging his elbow so that it all but connected with my chin. Behind him, Handy stopped by me for a moment.
‘I heard that,’ he muttered. ‘It’s crap, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is,’ I whispered back. ‘If that idiot’s footprint is shallower than the other one it’s because he’s wearing sandalsand they spread his weight. Also the boatman was running, so of course his print was heavier. But it worked!’
‘Can’t wait to find out what your next trick is!’
‘Neither can I,’ I murmured ruefully, as I set off after the rest of the line.
Beyond the rushes the ground became firmer and started to slope steeply towards the wooded hill called Chapultepec.
The maize fields around the base of the hill were bare at this time of year. They formed short terraces, bordered by bushes and broad, low, fleshy-leaved maguey plants; apart from these and a few scattered huts there was nothing to obstruct our view of the countryside. I looked up at the hill, conscious that everyone else was staring at me.